Human After All
by asterika
Summary: Porky and Claus discover that despite their best efforts, some old ghosts are hard to wipe clean.


_Be strong, Claus._

When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was the beam of the surgical light. The hard plastic of the operating table pressed deep into his back.

Then came the pain, stretching from his face and arching all the way through his body down to each finger and toe. Or whatever fingers and toes he had left.

Claus looked around, but there was no comfort in any other sights around him. From what he could see, the rest of the room was doused in an equally sterile fluorescent light. Masked men were still rummaging with their implements as they moved around him.

One of the operators pulled his surgical mask down. His face was round and brutish with a waxy complexion, but he scrutinised Claus with an almost tender expression.

"Nod if you can understand me."

Claus nodded, even though it sent tremors of pain down his body.

"What's your name?"

"Claus."

It was strange. He knew he was answering promptly, but the words were slurring out of his mouth with what felt like a full minute of delay.

"What's the last thing you remember, Claus?"

He strained his eyes, partly from the light and partly from the pain of the memory.

"I found the Drago. I tried to fight it. But I – "

"That's enough."

The operator backed away from the table, pulling the mask back over his face. He jerked his head backward, and the rest of the personnel followed him.

As they muttered between themselves, the lucid haze of painkillers wore off and Claus could feel his heart pounding. The numbness was fading from his face, and the synthetic mesh they'd put in where the tissue had been ripped from his cheeks felt hard against the rest of the skin still attached.

The minutes ticked by, but eventually the operators returned. There was a faint rustling in the background and the flick of a few switches, before the round-faced operator who had interrogated him blocked the beam of the surgical light with a small LCD screen.

Someone else attached a microphone to his robe.

"Wh – what's happening?"

"His Highness will speak to you now," the operator said. "Answer every question. Try to be truthful."

Claus stammered, protesting, but the screen flickered for a brief second before it formed an image.

He hadn't seen very many pigs in his life, other than the ones raised on Butch's farm. The one and only day he'd gone with his father to barter animals, Butch had felt it necessary to go into detail about a sow that had died from exudative epidermitis.

Flint had asked him to stop, but Butch refused to listen. He led them to the shed where he housed the pigs. Though his father had tried to protect him, the image of the sow's wasted head was forever burned into Claus's memory.

Claus stared at the screen. The man's face carried an almost comical resemblance to that greasy-faced pig – shrivelled, bloated skin dotted with oozing sores covering the skull.

If it even was a man. He looked old, but there was something floppy about his hair and mutinous about his gaze that gave off an adolescent sheen.

The pig-man let loose a guttural series of hacks and coughs before he spoke.

"You fought with my little Drago, correct?"

Claus was too scared to talk. He nodded.

"You were impressive. Severe gashing, penetrating the hide. Hardware failures, frying of wires and circuits. You didn't kill the thing, but you sure softened it up for the person who did."

Claus tried to clear his throat, but it came out as a raspy cough. He retched for a moment and leant over the side of the operating table, expelling a glob of bloody mucus onto the tiled floor.

"I'll keep this quick," the pig-man continued. "I'll be frank with you. If we do not act quickly and drastically, you will die. Understand?"

Still unable to talk, Claus nodded despite the unpleasant jolt of fear trickling down his back.

"You have two choices. Either we let you die, and you are reanimated, or we reconstruct you. Get what that means?"

Claus shook his head.

The pig-man snickered. "Ever take your toys apart and reattach them all mixed up, so you end up with cool new toys? That's about it."

He found his voice. "Won't that kill me?"

"No, not at all," the man smirked. "We've tested the procedure multiple times. You'll live, in the palest sense of the word. You will just exist as a soulless shell – a gadget restored to factory settings. Exclusively for me to play with."

Belatedly, Claus understood it. The man wasn't trying to scare him. The pig-man knew that regardless of whatever option he chose, there would be none of him left to feel scared of what was going to happen to him.

Whether he liked it or not, his body was parting ways with his soul.

* * *

The Reconstruction Project was progressing with great success. Porky had no reason to suspect configuring the boy would be any different.

Surely enough, the physical reconstruction proceeded without a hitch. The limbs that were deemed inoperable were swiftly removed and replaced with the most current bionic counterparts. Luckily for the boy, one of the limbs that had to go was the right arm, which gave Porky all the more reason to try out the prototype Arm Cannon on a subject with enough dexterity to properly use it.

After that, it only made sense to attach a sword for short-range combat.

The ordeal came a week later, when the technicians began on mental reconfiguration. Fassad acted as both messenger and coordinator of the project, harbouring the unlucky titles of bringer and architect of bad news.

"We are still so close, your Highness."

"Close is not finished, my slippery friend," Porky snapped, positioning the spider-mech less than a foot away from the face of the Magypsy.

Fassad chose not to back down.

"You know that the more intelligent an animal is, the more likely it will resist the reconstruction process. Vertebrates proved more of a challenge than invertebrates, chickens were easier than elephants. But this is different.

"With each iteration we try, it's the same stumbling block. He resists the essential portion of the program. He resists the link we want to establish between his spirit and yours."

"You're telling me there's enough of him left in there that he's still putting up a fight?" Porky snarled. "Who screwed up during reset?"

"No one, your Highness. We double-checked, triple-checked even. According to all our methods and past successes, he should be completely wiped clean."

Renowned for his signature laugh, Fassad was very rarely quiet. But he chose a long period of silence before continuing, chewing over every word even when he started again.

"It's as if there is a piece of his soul still latching on, refusing to let go."

Porky considered his options.

"The linkage is dependent on both of us, right?"

Fassad bowed his head in agreement. "Yes. Synergy is the way we're able to create such high levels of intelligence in the Chimeras."

An insane idea lit up inside Porky's head. "What about an overwrite? Obscuring the memories he currently has with new ones."

Chewing a lip, Fassad nodded. "I can see that working. We can access his memories, delete his initial responses, and write new ones in. Make the positive responses scary and make the bad ones comforting."

"How long will that take?"

"Not long at all. We already have his memories encoded; it will just be a matter of altering a few lines of the code to create disorientation."

Porky smirked, marvelling at the genius of his plan. "And the risk?"

"We will not establish a proper link between you and the boy."

Porky snorted. "I don't see a problem with that. If we're already programming him with any executable actions needed, is the link even necessary?"

Fassad grinned.

"As smart as our code is, it still has limitations. If the boy encounters a situation we cannot prepare for, then it's anyone's guess what he'll try and do. You will lose that control in case of contingency."

Porky shrugged. Fassad scoffed.

"For what purpose you hope he serves, I would think you would be a little more careful with what you're about to do.

"The Needles are delicate instruments. If you want to use them for your grand plan of destruction, that's your prerogative. But the fact that it is your prerogative and not his means that his spirit must be perfectly aligned with yours in order to make that dream a reality."

"Then put it in code!" Porky hissed, extending a pincer.

"We have, your Highness!" Fassad replied, alarmed. "But it is impossible to properly account for context. If he has even a semblance of an emotional response to whatever happens before he pulls a Needle, his motivations for pulling the needle will become unknowable.

I don't know how to make this more clear. If his soul is at even a one percent mismatch to yours, you will not get what you want. Is that a risk you are willing to take?"

"Yeah," Porky retorted. "Because how long will it take to establish the proper link otherwise?"

Fassad remained tight-lipped, and that was all the reply Porky needed. With a single wave, he dismissed the Magypsy and pulled up the screen inside the spider-mech.

After a few minutes, Porky watched Fassad return to the laboratory. Claus – or what used to be Claus – was lying motionless on the workbench. Wires connected the back of his head to an enormous, multi-monitor, multi-keyboard setup occupying most of the back wall of the room.

He watched Fassad's lips move under the grainy footage of the security camera. He saw the blank looks of shock registered on the faces of the technicians. A short argument erupted before Fassad raised a fist, and the room quietened.

Three scientists returned to the setup. They scrolled through mountains of text on the monitors, typing furiously. A little over five minutes later, and they backed away from the displays and turned their attention to the boy.

Fassad cast a weathered glance directly into the camera, attempting to catch Porky's gaze before he pounded a switch connected to Claus.

In one fluid motion, he rose, brandishing the cannon where his arm used to be. Everyone in the room ducked, and the reawakened commander fired a blast without warning.

The computer setup exploded in a shower of sparks and scraps, spraying wreckage all over the room. A stray shard of shrapnel pierced the lens of the camera, and Porky's feed was cut off.

As he stared at the snow filling up the screen, his upper lip curled into a smile.

* * *

Training his new soldier was a lot like breaking in a fresh pair of sneakers. With a sledgehammer.

The first few sessions were so bad that the newly constructed Claus was unlikely to even graze the target. His aim was so unsteady Porky was often worried that he would be the victim of friendly fire.

Not that Claus was very friendly. Or anything at all. When he wasn't issued orders or being punished by the fancy new shock collar, he simply stood, staring. It would've looked like he was trying to solve a math question if his eyes weren't so vacant.

Fassad dropped into the third session and watched Claus take aim with a quivering arm at the target that was now only five feet in front of his face. He jerked at the last moment and the beam fired upward, blasting a dent into the ceiling above.

"If he's programmed with all of the normal executables," Porky said, struggling to keep his voice even, "How is he struggling with this?"

"We introduced a bunch of mutations into the code," Fassad responded. "Whenever you give him an order, there are a huge number of operations wrestling with one another. What you end up with is _that_."

Porky grumbled as Claus took aim again.

"When can I expect to see improvements?"

"The more orders you give him, the quicker the program will learn."

Porky snorted. "I know that, idiot. I asked you _when_."

"'Never' would not be far from the truth. The code is smart and self-learning, but it is not self-healing. There is always a chance the wrong operation will be read again. The boy will get better at correcting himself faster, but the probability does exist."

Porky narrowed his eyes, then shrugged. "Good enough."

Fassad smirked. "Do you have any actual idea how computers work, your Highness?"

"That's why I have you, don't I?" Porky sneered.

"You cannot ever delete anything from a hard drive without great difficulty. When you hit the 'delete' button, you are forming a fresh layer that you can write new data onto. It's like covering a stain on a table with a cloth."

Porky bristled. "Do you have a point, or are you just rambling?"

Fassad chuckled. "I said we deleted his memories, right? They're not gone. The boy's soul is still there. It's just hiding. And I think you of all people know best about what happens to things that hide."

Claus fired again, missing the target by another wide margin.

Porky snarled, finally biting at the sedition in his commander's tone.

"Yeah, I hid. But I came back with my ambitions reaffirmed. And I made them happen. And that will happen again here."

"Oh?" Fassad fired back, abandoning all pretence.

"I have crushed many a spirit before this boy. He came from a place where the most impressive piece of technology is the mechanical plow. You think I'm afraid of a simple-minded kid from a simple-minded town?"

"You're very defensive." Fassad grinned, complacent.

Porky could feel the phlegm rise in his throat. But rage was a much more domineering force, and it was rising concurrently.

"You will not come near my new toy until I give you explicit permission. Mark my words, the next time you see him, there will be no spirit left to crush, because I will have extracted it all! By me! Me!"

He would have continued the tirade, but the phlegm had finally balled up at the top of his throat and he issued a blast of painful wheezes.

Fassad nodded, grinning triumphantly. "Will do. I hope you know what you're doing."

Porky didn't bother turning as he watched Fassad leave. He turned his attention back to Claus, who had resumed doing absolutely nothing.

The weeks stretched into months, and improvement was marginal at best. Within three months, Claus had learned how to run a good hundred yards without stumbling. The lead programmer told Porky that the root of Claus's accuracy problems stemmed from the faulty wiring in his eyes. A schematic was drawn, a prototype built, and a few weeks later, Claus wore a helmet with a visor perfectly tuned to the electrical currents of his synapses.

Twelve months was what it took for Claus to make his first long distance shot. Porky knew he'd achieved his first modest form of success when the personnel on the 99th floor of the Tower started referring to the boy as the 'Masked Man'.

Fassad was invited in as the second year of training drew to a close. The two of them watched from behind reinforced glass as Claus wielded sword and cannon simultaneously, carving his way through a series of hard plastic dummies and knocking down long range targets with razor-sharp aim.

After the carnage inside the room settled, the pair watched Claus pull his posture together into a rigid salute.

Fassad cackled. "You've made more progress than I could have imagined. I'll give you that much, your Highness."

Porky raised an eyebrow. "Are you suggesting there are some kinks that still need to be worked out? Did you turn a blind eye to the display you just witnessed?"

"I'm not suggesting," Fassad said. "I know there are kinks you haven't worked out. And deep down, I know you know that too."

Unflinching, Porky waved a hand. Fassad was dismissed.

As soon as the elevator door closed, Porky reached for the microphone again.

"End training for today! And clean up the room!"

Porky waited for a few seconds of inactivity before he slammed a fist on the switch. Another current ran through Claus's body, and he jittered.

Regardless, he remained still. From behind the glass, Porky could just barely make out a squint in the child's eye, as if he was remembering a memory that he could only see the edges of.

"I'm not your mom, and I'm not gonna ask you again!" Porky roared, pushing the voltage up and activating the shock again. "Follow your orders!"

But Claus wasn't there anymore. He was standing in the workshop of a spacious wooden cabin perched near the peak of a mountain. He breathed in the smell of fresh pine and lemon oil, watching his grandfather recane a rocking chair as he heard his mother shout an eerily similar plea for order from the twin bedroom upstairs. Claus saw his brother sneak him a mischievous grin, wiping away the mop of blonde hair from his eyes.

The ghosts of his past had not stopped haunting him. Not during the session, not during the last two years. Not ever.

The most important fraction of his soul never left him, because it was never a part of him. That part of his spirit was getting ready to go to sleep alone in a bed built for two back in Tazmily, combing his hair into orderly strands in one hand and clutching an old kid's shoe - his shoe - in the other.

Porky hit the switch again, pushing the voltage to maximum.

And yet the Masked Man hesitated, perhaps listening to the echoes of the long-lost rattling around inside the recesses of his mind even as he shook from the electricity coursing through his body.

_Be strong, Claus._

_Be strong for your brother._

_Be strong for me._


End file.
